The reality is that government has little impact on your individual life unless something very specific happens like a draft for WW3, or you get unlucky enough to get in some terrorist cross-fire.
If you don't got to protests and you don't work in government, virtually nothing will happen to you.
You can live in Putin's Russia or Saudi Arabia, and unless you are actively challenging political power or your country is at war, nothing bad will happen to you. How do you think most of the world lives? Most people live in peace even in a warzone. Even in Ukraine people mostly live in peace and go about business as usual.
When bad stuff happens, it falls on a very small percentage of the population. Only those who are unlucky get hit.
Realistically we are talking about a market crash and some bad inflation. That's mostly what I expect. Plus a bunch of media noise, chaos, and corruption. And of course the death of democracy. Death of democracy does not mean that you personally get a gun to your head.

The suffering has to not be traumatic, crippling, and experienced with a degree of consciousness rather than avoidance in order for it to be beneficial.

The biggeat trick is that God can hide stuff from itself. Consciousness has the capacity to forget and to remember.
So imagine that therr is a goblin living in your closet, but you just forgot about it. That's really the power that God has over itself. There are literal goblins that God is hiding from you. This is an aspect of God/Consciousness that no nondual chimp understands or talks about. Because they brainwashed themselves with the idea that now is all there is. But there exist goblins which you don't now see. But you could see them if only your consciousness was higher. And no amount of nondual chimpery will do it.

How is it not obvious to you that you could experience a short term mental performance boost at the cost of lower long-term performance?
Many things in life give great results, with a hidden long term cost.
Just as a basic example, studies show that chronic weed use leads to deterioration of memory over the long term.
I love weed, but I wouldn't want to lose my memory as I get older so I would not use it chroncially.

This is false. You are engaging in a now reductionism. It is wrong to strip consciousness down to only the now. It is now, but it's also more than now.
Degrees of consciousness is not a conceptual or even a human construction, it is part of the absolute nature of consciousness.
You can be profoundly awake and still realize there are higher degrees of consciousness which you do not yet have. In fact, if you don't realize this you're not very bright.
Yes, imagination must be employed to go beyond the now, but that's a feature not a bug. Imagination IS how consciousness fully grasps itself, because it IS imagination. This imagination is absolute, not merely conceptual.
Right now even if you are enlightened, Consciousness is hiding from you. It is hiding things you cannot even comprehend are there. If you say, "But NOW is all there is!" Well, that's how you hide it from yourself.
Notice, NOW is absolute, but also NOW is always changing. You can't deny that NOW is never the same. So clearly things are hidden from you. And not just material things, but Consciousnes itself is hiding from you. For example, you don't even know what insanity consciousness is. Because you need to be sane to stay alive as a human. So you being human hides a lot from you.
If you've never experienced an increase in your consciousness then I don't even know why you do spirituality.
There are only two options here: either consciousness can increase or it cannot. If it cannot, then all spiritual practice and all of spirituality is bullshit. So then why are you doing and talking about it? Just go drink and party and enjoy your current level of consciousness because there's nothing more.
And if you think you've maxed out your consciousness, you truly are a fool.

It's good that you are thinking more seriously about this topic, because it is very tricky and most people are wrong in their understanding of it.
You are inside a dream. Your dream has a certain coherence and flow to it which is beyond you ability to control or to change. Those aspects of your dream which you cannot change, we call objective truth or "reality". For example, you are dreaming that the Earth is round, and you cannot undream that. But all of that assumes your dream will continue as before. But that won't always be the case. Your dream could change and then all those objective truths are rug-pulled.
And then there could be truths which hold regardless of what you're dreaming. For example, the nature of Consciousness is beyond the contents of any dream. The fact that you are in a dream, is not relative or subjective.
But beware, most things which people call objective truths are not, they are opinions, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.
And beware, people are not all dreaming the same dream. So what is objectively true in your dream may not be in another's dream. This is one of big mistakes of science: science assumes we all dream the same dream.
But even furthermore, ultimately you are dreaming all other dreams and dreamers. So in this sense everything is absolutely relative to You/God. But you as a human are nowhere near this level of consciousness.

I helped my mother to almost cure it! From strong severe noise and even hallucinations back to almost normal with just sometimes a bit of discomfort and now that is happening only when she is in bed and in a special side position.

She was a nurse and was infected by a child with some infection. Her ear was even bleeding at some point (it was many years ago). Then she was hearing some small sounds very rarely. Recently, (a few years ago/ now she is in pension) it started increasing more and more until it was so terrible that she started even hallucinating every evening in her peripheral vision. I was lost and desperately searching for the root cause. I thought it is B6 or B3 deficiency. Even found a doctor in England that is removing dead skin from years and helps recovery of lost hearing. But in parallel to that found a good doctor that suggested blood test to accurately measure her micromanagement levels. The result was: all was in a good level, but one: SERIN! I was shocked. Her serine level was 0. Missing completely! And SERIN is a crucial neurotransmitter! We started L-Serin high dose supplementation and some additional antioxidants and in about 4 months the hallucinations stopped. Then slowly the noise was also reduced. Now it is around one year since we have done the blood measurement and she feels almost like when she was feeling before it all started. Of course she has and old physical damage from the infection, and that we cannot recover. But it is now just one special side position of the head when she is in bed.

My Doctor use to say: Test, do not guess
So, I am really happy with that result. It was an incredible experience!
Especially, considering my mother is 75 now.

In addition: I do not recommend you to take serin without testing! Because if your levels are normal (and you do not know that) - overdosing can have the opposite effect - as it is also with B3, B12 But especially with B6! It can be some other deficiency for you. The best is to test your micro-nutrients level with a good test that measures the levels for the past 6 months based on white blood cells. 
I am living in Europe and cost me a lot to transport her blood with my language to a country where I can send priority shipping so that the blood arrive on time to USA for the test! It was almost impossible to manage but I was able to find a plane connection that covers the hours and then to give it on time for the shipment. But I am so glad I did it!
God it was worthy!!!

I am beggining to suspect how Yoga works, particularly pure physical Hatha Yoga. (Not talking about energy process such as kriyas, but merely what is called as 'Asanas'.)
What is Yoga. Well, you have to do a lot to start understanding it. I have done some Asanas more than 1000 times.
For example, I suspect Cat Stretch I´ve done it about 1200-1300 times. Maybe 1500 times. I´m not sure. So Is not like I´m talking from nothing. 
It seems exaggerated but understanding really what Yoga is does take some time. 
At first I believed the intention of Asanas was to clear and calm the mind in order for a higher perception or consciousness to happen, but that is a very basic understanding. 
After some time a whole new possibility opens up. Something much much much more profound of what you thought at the beggining Yoga was. 
When doing an Asana properly, the belief or feeling of individuality is dissolved (yeah, that goes for all of you solipsistic dudes out there).
Why it dissolves is not because it does something to the brain. 
Is because physically and energetically you are putting your body in such a way that is completely in synchrony and symmetry with Reality. 
Is not that you unite yourself with Reality. Is that the body merges and dissolves right there.
It was already 'dissolved' in the first place. You were already in Unity or 'One' with reality in the first place. But, the usual asymmetry of the human system, which in part is necessary for the process of survival (let´s remember, survival is about you vs me), makes it like you are not.. 
So it is created a sense of individuality through the life of a human. And most humans never break or dissolve this sense of individuality.
Notice im saying 'sense'. Individuality is not a reality. Is not a fact. It is just a sense, a compression that is formed. But if you align the body and the whole system in such a way, this sense of individuality or separation gets completely seen through and dissolved. 
From holding Asanas a lot of information can enter you. Just like with a Psychedelic.
For example, you can 'download' information in the sense that the whole Reality is just like a mirror. A Infinite Diamond Mirror. 
This is kind of impossible to explain, so let´s leave that as a motivator for people to start a Hatha Yoga practice. 
One day you will understand things that no book can transmit you. Neither I am because words are dual. Only through a direct experience of symmetry you can understand.
This will not only make your life more profound, it will give you an understanding of non duality, unity, God, etc... that it will be very sticky. It won´t be just like a state of consciousness that you can lose. It is a certain information that makes all the pieces 'fit'. 
Is not intellectual information, is something else, is much more...real. More clear. Is like you get direct connection to the hard drive of infinity, and you download it into your mind. 
The Universe is symmetry, perfect balance. For you grasp it, you have to make yourself completely symmetric and balanced within you. Then all is accessible for you. Because you are it.

I´ll meet you at the Bliss that we are. 

Yes, this is the fundamental problem with capitalism, it actually rewards some of the easy and less important jobs while underpaying the most important ones like school teachers and other kinds of helper roles.
It's twisted that a Hollywood actor makes $50 million of 3 months work while the teachers of their children earn $60k/yr.

Eventually you will go so far in this work that you will realize that no concept given to you from a human is good enough, and you will drop all that in order to derive everything by yourself from scratch based on your direct experiences. And as you do this, you will grow faster in a month than you did in years. You will feel every philosophical concept just holding you back from doing the real work.
The real work is not based in theory or logical deduction or philosophy. And I am not just talking about Awakening. I'm talking about understanding all the dynamics of yourself and your mind. How you work.

One of the best ways is to have a daily visualization practice where you picture only positive things for your life for 20 mins per day. And do it every day, like a meditation practice.

Surprisingly, this question might take your contemplations on this topic further:
If you just took a wild guess, where would you say you're most wrong?
And then just observe your intuition very carefully.

Hi, I've recently moved to the letting go meditation where I just don't try to do anything, I even let go the desire to let go as Leo said in one of his guided meditations. This way works best for me in terms of not thinking during meditation but whenever I really let go I have this weird, heavy feeling in my chest as if my lungs were pressured. It's hard to describe it but it's in a way relief but also I can't take it for too long, it exhausts me pretty quickly. Did anybody experience something like this? I know Leo was talking about being superconductor where you don't even feel the negative emotions going through you but my experience is far from that. After this kind of meditation I feel better and more clear minded but still it's hard for me to stay in it for more than 15 minutes really. Will it pass with time? I don't feel many negative emotions, I don't really experience many emotions at all, I didn't feel really happy for the past four years but I don't feel sadness either. Should I just keep going with it or adjust it?